July 11 in A.A. History

1950: Lawrence Morris Markey, author of the September 1939 Liberty magazine article “Alcoholics and God,” was found dead by family members at his home in Halifax, Virginia.
    The Winchester Evening Star (Virginia) reported [right], under the headline “Former Newsman Is Shot to Death,” that the local coroner discovered a small-caliber bullet wound behind Markey’s right ear. The coroner issued an “open verdict,” stating there was insufficient evidence to determine whether the death was a homicide, suicide, or accident. The case remains open to this day.
    The next day, The New York Times headlined its page 30 article [left]: “Morris Markey, 51, Writer, Shot Dead,” and included a brief biography:

    Mr. Markey, a member of the original staff on the New Yorker magazine, was widely known in the writing field. He established the magazine’s feature “A Reporter at Large.”
    Mr. Markey’s career carried him through jobs here with the Daily New, World and Evening World, and assignments for McCall’s magazine, the North American Newspaper Alliance and the Reader’s Digest.
    Apart from his career on The New Yorker, 1925–31, when he served in virtually every department, Mr. Markey won his greatest recognition for a series on the American scene later published under the title “This Country of Yours.”
    Just eighteen years ago he wrote a sentence of which he was extremely proud. It happened while on a tour of Russia and Manchuria. Under a Harbin dateline, in June, 1932, he predicted: “Ten years from this day the United States of America will be at war with the Japanese Empire.”…
    A venture as a script writer in Hollywood, 1936–38, was, he once recalled, “unproductive.” Mr. Markey was accredted a war correspondent with the Navy in the Marshall Islands, Mariannas [sic], Iwo Jima and the Philippines [sic] Sea.

    Two days after his death, The New York Times published another article, “Markey Death Mystery” [right], which revealed two additional details: 1) Markey's body was found “with a rifle beside him,” and 2) The Commonwealth attorney “expressed an opinion that Mr. Markey might have fallen, jarring down the gun, suspended on the wall, causing it to fire when it struck the floor.”

1960: Time magazine [left: cover] published an article titled “Passionately Anonymous,” which covered the 25th anniversary celebration of Alcoholics Anonymous in Long Beach, California. The article began:

    The 15,000 men and women who thronged California's Long Beach Memorial Stadium last week differed from most conventioneers in one major respect, there was no danger that any of them would get together in a hotel room to kill a bottle For this was Alcoholics Anonymous, mustering its recovered, sworn-off drinkers, their relatives and well-wishers to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

2023: By this date, JBKM, Ltd. had re-established a National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD) website at ncaddnational.org. In May 2021, JBKM, Ltd. had acquired NCADD (formerly National Council on Alcoholism—NCA—founded by Marty M. [right, 1940s] in 1942 as National Committee for Education on Alcoholism—NCEA).

July in A.A. History—day unknown

1947: Herbert “Herb” L. D., an American residing in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, received contact information for a prospective Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) member from Margaret “Bobbie” B., National Secretary of the Alcoholic Foundation in New York City. Bobbie included Spanish-language booklets and pamphlets, despite Portuguese being Brazil’s primary language.
    Herb had gotten sober in A.A. in Chicago in 1945. When he learned he would be transferred to Rio de Janeiro to direct McCann-Erickson, Inc.’s art department, he had requested contact information for A.A. in that city. The Alcoholic Foundation provided him with the name and address of their sole contact there: Lynn G. However, Herb was unable to locate anyone by that name and, in June, had written the Alcoholic Foundation requesting other potential contacts.